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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Bad Teacher

Expectations:
Excluding The Hangover Part 2, I expected this summer to be very lacking in the comedy department. However, I thought that Bad Teacher might just be the second best comedy of the summer (behind The Hangover Part 2 of course). I'm not a big fan of Cameron Diaz, but the trailers were amazingly funny, particularly the Jason Segel parts: "That's the only argument I need, Shaun!" I just wanted to laugh my butt off. That's all.

Plot:
The plot revolves around a "bad teacher" being very very "bad," and I guess that's about it. The only part of the movie that wasn't about being bad was when Cameron Diaz helped out one of the boys in her class. This was such a good moment in a movie filled with nothing but unlearned lesson on how to destroy your own life and the lives of others. THE END!

Characters:
Although the storyline struggled, there were actually a lot of good, funny characters. The problem is that there was a bad character to cancel out every good one. Cameron Diaz was just as annoying as she is in every other movie. I don't know why I expected anything more. Even with that being said, her character was Oscar-worthy compared to that of Lucy Punch's character. Most would know her as Darla from Dinner for Schmucks, a movie in which I loved her character. Even though I loved Dinner for Schmucks, whoever cast her in Bad Teacher should be fired. On a brighter note, Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel were freakin hilarious! Timberlake's character was very different than I expected and just cracked me up. Segel was pretty much his normal hilarious self. The problem was that neither of these guys got enough screen time, particularly Segel. Every time he was on screen I laughed, but those times were few and far between. Instead, I was forced to watch Cameron Diaz every single minute for and hour and a half.

Conclusion:
Although the summer is not yet over, I must predict that Bad Teacher will be one of my most disappointing movies of 2011. I did laugh and enjoy parts, but it just could have been soooooo much better. The cast had its ups and downs, but the plot just completely sucked. With that being said, I give Bad Teacher 1.98 out of 5 stars. I just hope that I watch another good comedy before the summer ends. If not, I will just have to watch The Hangover Part 2 over and over to make myself feel better about the summer of 2011.